Robert Kingett<p>So if anybody wants to buy that Hunger Games book, <a href="https://bookshop.org/a/77/9781546171461" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">bookshop.org/a/77/978154617146</span><span class="invisible">1</span></a> <span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://a.gup.pe/u/bookstodon" class="u-url mention" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@<span>bookstodon</span></a></span> <a href="https://caneandable.social/tags/Books" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Books</span></a> <a href="https://caneandable.social/tags/HungerGames" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>HungerGames</span></a></p>
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From 2017: #BernieSanders: We must end #GlobalOligarchy
"Greed is their religion."
By Bernie Sanders, November 13, 2017
"One of the major, untold stories of our time is the rapid movement toward global #oligarchy, in which just a handful of# billionaires now own and control a significant part of the world economy [and the US government in January 2025].
"Here in the United States, the top one-tenth of 1% owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90%. Incredibly, according to a recent report from the Institute for Policy Studies, three of the richest people in America – #BillGates, #JeffBezos and #WarrenBuffett – now own more wealth than bottom 160 million people in our country.
"But this is clearly not just an American issue. It is a global issue. While millions of people throughout the world live in dire poverty, without clean drinking water, adequate health care, decent housing, or education for their kids, the six wealthiest people in the world as ranked by Forbes Magazine own more wealth, according to Oxfam, than the bottom half of the world’s population, 3.6 billion people.
"This massive level of wealth and income inequality, and the political power associated with that wealth, is an issue that cannot continue be ignored. We must fight back.
"Thanks to the so-called #ParadisePapers, a trove of millions of documents analyzed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (#ICIJ) and its collaborating news outlets, we now have a better understanding of how the largest corporations and wealthiest people in the world avoid paying their taxes and hide ownership of assets. Needless to say, these billionaires are all strong supporters of our military, our veterans, our infrastructure, our schools and other government services. They would just prefer that you pay for those activities, not them.
"According to the ICIJ’s investigative reporting, the Americans listed as having offshore accounts in the Paradise Papers, (which have not been independently reviewed by CNN), are a who’s who of billionaires, some of whom are the very same officials who have led the effort to promote the Republican tax plan, which would provide even more tax-avoiding opportunities to the very rich.
"Even before these revelations, we knew that #TaxDodging by the #wealthy and large #corporations, not just in the US but globally, was taking place on a massive scale. In 2012, the Tax Justice Network, a British advocacy group, estimated that at least $21 trillion was stashed in offshore tax havens around the world. In other words, while governments enact austerity budgets, which lower the standard of living of working people, the super-rich avoid their taxes.
"According to Berkeley economist Gabriel Zucman, individuals in the US are avoiding $36 billion through offshore tax schemes and US corporations are avoiding more than $130 billion through these schemes. The situation has become so absurd that one five-story office building in the #Caymans is now the 'home' of nearly 20,000 corporations – and that is just one of many tax havens operating across the globe.
"The essence of oligarchy is that the #BillionaireClass is never satisfied with what they have. They want more, more and more – no matter what impact their efforts have on working people, the elderly, children, the sick and the poor. Greed is their religion. While the oligarchs are avoiding their taxes, Trump and his Republican colleagues, ostensibly in order to save federal dollars, have been trying to throw tens of millions of Americans off of their health insurance, and make massive cuts in education, nutrition assistance and affordable housing.
"As a candidate for president, Trump promised that he would stand up for the working class of this country. Needless to say, that was a lie. Almost half of the benefits in the Trump/Republican tax plan would go to the top 1%, according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. Additionally, they want to lower the corporate tax rate from 35% to 20%, even though in 2012 one out of every five large, profitable corporations in the US paid no federal income taxes at all and between 2008 and 2015, 18 corporations had a tax rate lower than 0%.
"Republicans also want to make it easier for companies to shelter their profits overseas and pay zero taxes. The 'territorial tax system' they are proposing, which means companies would be taxed only on income earned within our country’s borders, would exempt the offshore profits of American corporations from US taxes and allow for a one-time 12% tax on their offshore cash profits when brought back into the United States.
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"Meanwhile, while the wealthy and large corporations are receiving huge tax breaks, nearly half of middle-class families would actually see their taxes go up by the end of the decade by eliminating deductions for medical expenses, student loan interest rates, state and local income and sales taxes, and the cost of health insurance for the self-employed.
"The Paradise Papers make it clearer than ever that we need, in the United States and throughout the world, a tax system which is fair, progressive and transparent.
"Now is the time, in the United States and internationally, for people to come together to take on the greed of the oligarchs. We can and must create a global economy that works for all, not just a handful of billionaires."
https://www.cnn.com/2017/11/13/opinions/oligarchy-paradise-papers-bernie-sanders-opinion/index.html
CNN · Bernie Sanders: We must end global oligarchy
#HungerGames #BreadAndCircus
#BreadAndiPhone #iPhoneFever
#CheaperEggs "Cheaper Eggs, Cheaper Hot Dogs"
#BeholdenToBillionares :::: #MoreChicaneryOpera
::: #ManchurianPopulation "Manchurian Population // Society Wide"
#CostCoILoveYou ::: #Idiocracy2006 #FWakeY2006 #FWakeYear2006
#Corpos
A friend just sent me this. 
Feels accurate. #HungerGames #HarrisWalz2024
After the floods: 'A catastrophic year' on farms
8 August 2024
Dave Harvey
"Farmers are counting the cost of the long, wet winter as they start to bring in record low harvests of grain.
"The amount of wheat planted has fallen by nearly a tenth, and two thirds of British farmers say they have lost money.
"Throughout winter and spring many fields were waterlogged, crops that had been sown were lost and farmers couldn’t get onto fields to sow anything.
"Mike Wilkins, an arable farmer in Wiltshire, lost about half his wheat. He said: 'We have lost thousands and thousands of pounds this year, it has been catastrophic.'
"When I first met Mike Wilkins in May, he had a lake on his farm.
"High on the Marlborough Downs, you could see for miles around.
"But where wheat should have stood, there were swans and ducks paddling around.
"Other fields were so wet the wheat sown had failed, rotting in the ground.
"'If we don’t make a loss it will be a miracle,” he told me at the time."
BBC NewsAfter the floods: Less wheat in a "catastrophic year" on farmsTwo thirds of farmers say they are losing money as extreme weather hits the harvest on UK farms.
Continued thread
#Gaza 2/2 i know most people here do not but if you ever stray onto X Alon Mizrahi there is really worth checking out. In March he wrote about what a total #Taboo it is to even talk about Palestinians or Gaza in Israel; most people pretend it just doesn’t exist. Well, the same applies here. It is a total taboo, more than a year ago, to even talk about it. We are all those rich people in #HungerGames, blocking out how our privilege is built on the suffering of others, in Gaza and elsewhere.
Replied in thread
The #climate is changing so fast that we haven’t seen how bad extreme weather could get
Decades-old statistics no longer represent what is possible in the present day.
Simon Lee, Hayley Fowler, and Paul Davies, The Conversation - 7/31/2024
"#ExtremeWeather is, by definition, rare on our planet. Ferocious #storms, searing #heatwaves, and biting #ColdSnaps illustrate what the climate is capable of at its worst. However, since Earth’s climate is rapidly warming, predominantly due to #FossilFuel burning, the range of possible weather conditions, including extremes, is changing.
"Scientists define 'climate' as the distribution of possible weather events observed over a length of time, such as the range of temperatures, rainfall totals, or hours of sunshine. From this, they construct statistical measures, such as the average (or normal) temperature. Weather varies on several timescales—from seconds to decades—so the longer the period over which the climate is analyzed, the more accurately these analyses capture the infinite range of possible configurations of the atmosphere."
Ars Technica · The climate is changing so fast that we haven’t seen how bad extreme weather could getDecades-old statistics no longer represent what is possible in the present day.
Are drying #rivers a warning of #Europe's tomorrow?
by Paul Hokenos
13 September 2022
"Across southern #Romania, much of which relies on the #Danube for fresh #DrinkingWater, hundreds of villages are rationing water supplies and curtailing the irrigation of #farmland that Europe relies upon for #corn, #grain, #sunflowers, and #vegetables. The cruise ships that normally ferry tourists along the iconic waterway are docked. In the first six months of 2022, Romania's #hydropower utility #Hidroelectrica generated a third less electricity than it normally does. And Romanian #wheat farmers say that drought has cost them a fifth of their harvest. Romania is one of Europe's largest wheat producers, and all the more important for the international market in light of Russia's blockage of much of Ukraine's wheat exports.
"'At towns up and down the Danube, #drought and #ClimateChange take on an existential meaning,' explains Nick Thorpe, author of The Danube: A Journey Upriver from the #BlackSea to the #BlackForest. 'In contrast to city dwellers, they're having this disaster unfold before their eyes.'"
[...]
"Scientists say that the economic cost of the rivers' decimation is only part of the problem. The less water in the water system as a whole, explains Gabriel Singer, an ecologist at University of Innsbruck, Austria, the less dilution for #salts and the slower a river flows. This leads to higher #saline content and #HigherWaterTemperatures, which can be lethal for many species of #Riverine life, such as Danube #salmon, b#arbel, and European #grayling, among many others.
"Higher temperatures also feed #AlgaeBlooms, Singer explains, which can be #toxic for river systems. This is what has happened in several German rivers, including the Moselle and Neckar, as well as perhaps the Oder River, where in mid-August more than 100 metric tons (220,000lbs) of dead fish – among them #perch, #catfish, #pike, and #asp – washed up on its shores within a week. (Experts are currently investigating the cause of the die-off.)"
Read more:
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220912-are-drying-rivers-a-warning-of-europes-tomorrow
BBC · Are drying rivers a warning of Europe's tomorrow?
From 2013:
#DonaldSutherland: 'I want #HungerGames to stir up a #revolution'
by Rory Carroll
November 2013
"Donald Sutherland wants to stir revolt. A real revolt. A youth-led uprising against #injustice that will overturn the US as we know it and usher in a kinder, better way. 'I hope that they will take action because it's getting drastic in this country.' Drone strikes. #Corporate tax dodging. #Racism. The #Keystone oil pipeline. Denying #FoodStamps to 'starving Americans'. It's all going to pot. 'It's not right. It's not right.'
"Millennials need awakening from slumber. 'You know the young people of this society have not moved in the last 30 years.' With the exception of #Occupy, a minority movement, passivity reigns. "They have been consumed with telephones. The voice hardens. 'Tweeting.'
"We are high up in a Four Seasons hotel overlooking Beverly Hills, sunlight glinting off mansions and boutiques below, an unlikely cradle of revolution. Sutherland, resplendent in a dark suit and red tie, is pushing 80. But he is quite serious about the call to arms. 'We did it in '68.'
"The Canadian actor has a venerable record of #leftwing #activism dating back to support for the #BlackPanthers and opposition to the #VietnamWar, but this latest foray into subversion dovetails with promoting The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, the second installment in a series of four films based on Suzanne Collins's bestselling novels for young adults. It takes forward the story of Katniss, played by Jennifer Lawrence, who must fight other oppressed proles to the death as part of a tyrannical government's strategy of rule through fear.
"The dystopia, called Panem, is built on the ashes of the US, and Sutherland wants young audiences to respond to the allegory. 'Hopefully they will see this film and the next film and the next film and then maybe organise. Stand up.'"
Read more:
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/nov/19/donald-sutherland-hunger-games-catching-fire
The Guardian · Donald Sutherland: 'I want Hunger Games to stir up a revolution'
Continued thread
Well this is it. i am being made redundant.